Design History

In Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design, author Maggie Macnab takes you on an intimate and eclectic journey examining the unending versatility of nature, showing how to uncover nature’s ingenuity and use it to create beautiful and compelling designed communications.

The Department of Design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art has been the starting point for many of the most respected and influential names in American design. In the period form 1980 to 1990, the work of the department's students, designers-in-residence Katherine and Michael McCoy, and alumni, in graphic, product, furniture, and interior design, has challenged the accepted notions of what design can accomplish. An overview of this decade of innovative design is provided in this book.

"In a sense this second issue of an annual publication is a more inportant milestone than the first. Publishing history indicates that, difficult as it may be to lanch a new publication, it is often more difficult to keep it going. Many "annuals" have appeared only once. The reception of the first U.S. Industrial Design has been gratifying, and has made possible this second issue. The scheme on which the book is compiled has not been changed.

In the mid-1980s, Solly Angel had a technological mini-vision. He saw in his mind's eye a quarter-inch thick personal scale weighing a pound—a travel scale—and he decided to make it a reality, to bring it to market.

Between the 1930s and the 1960s, Raymond Loewy's streamlined designs for thousands of consumer goods—everything from toasters and refrigerators to automobiles and ocean liners—radically changed the look of American life.

In this ambitious book, Terry Smith chronicles the modernist revolution in American art and design between the world wars—from its origins in the new industrial age of mass production, automation, and corporate culture to its powerful and transforming effects on the way Americans came to see themselves and their world. From Ford Motor's first assembly line in 1913 to the New York World's Fair of 1939, Smith traces the evolution of visual imagery in the first half of America's century of progress.

This work celebrates the skill and vision of the world's most successful designers. The book begins with an in-depth introduction that outlines the major design trends of this century and examines the significance of designed objects in our daily lives. The core of the book is divided into chapters such as "Around the Home", "Transport", "Graphics and Advertising" and "Leisure". Each chapter is sub-divided into specific entries that cover every aspect of the man-made world, from armchairs to wallpaper.